Quake II Evolved

This is a very big and advanced project. In short, this port includes realistic particle effects (blood, water splashes, wall spark, smoke, explosions), per pixel lightning, dynamic entities shadows, blur effects based on shaders, high-resolution textures/models support and many many other eye candies.

Download and unpack the "q2e_v040.zip" archive to the directory with Quake 2 game files (this was 'E:\games\Quake II' in my case)

Start the game by running 'q2e.exe' from the game folder.

Open 'Options'->'Video' from main menu. Set appropriate 'Video Mode', 'Color Depth' and 'Texture Quality' to the values supported by your hardware.Set 'Geometry detail', 'Texture Detail' to 'Max' values.Set 'Texture Filter' to 'Trilinear'.I've been having some problems with in-game brightness in Quake 2 Evolved, so I also needed to adjust 'Gamma' and 'Intensity' values.Click 'Apply'.

Open 'Options'->'Video'->'Advanced' from main menu. Set all settings to the best available values. Be careful with the 'Texture Compression', because it's usage can lower the quality of the original Quake 2 textures.Click 'Apply'

Open 'Options'->'Perfomance' from main menu.Set 'Dynamic Lights', 'Caustics', 'Particles', 'Shell Effects' and 'Blood' to 'True'.Select 'Volumetric' for the 'Shadows', 'Shader' for 'Screen Blends', set 'Ejecting Brass' to 'High' and 'Decals' to 'Long'.Click 'Apply'.